The history of terrorism is a history of well-known and historically significant individuals, entities, and incidents associated, whether rightly or wrongly, with terrorism. Scholars agree that terrorism is a disputed term, and very few of those labeled terrorists describe themselves as such. It is common for opponents in a violent conflict to describe the other side as terrorists or as practicing terrorism.[1]

Depending on how broadly the term is defined, the roots and practice of terrorism can be traced at least to the 1st-century AD Sicarii Zealots, though some dispute whether the group, which assassinated collaborators with Roman rule in the province of Judea, was in fact terrorist. The first use in English of the term 'terrorism' occurred during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, when the Jacobins, who ruled the revolutionary state, employed violence, including mass executions by guillotine, to compel obedience to the state and intimidate regime enemies.[2] The association of the term only with state violence and intimidation lasted until the mid-19th century, when it began to be associated with non-governmental groups. Anarchism, often in league with rising nationalism and anti-monarchism, was the most prominent ideology linked with terrorism. Near the end of the 19th century, anarchist groups or individuals committed assassinations of a Russian Tsar and a U.S. President.

In the 20th century, terrorism continued to be associated with a vast array of anarchist, socialist, fascist and nationalist groups, many of them engaged in 'third world' anti-colonial struggles. Some scholars also labeled as terrorist the systematic internal violence and intimidation practiced by states such as the Stalinist Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.[3][4]

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Though many have been proposed, there is no consensus definition of the term "terrorism."[5][6] This in part derives from the fact that the term is politically and emotionally charged, "a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents."[7]

The term terrorist is believed to have originated during the Reign of Terror (September 5, 1793 – July 28, 1794) in France. It was a period of eleven months during the French Revolution when the ruling Jacobins employed violence, including mass executions by guillotine, in order to intimidate the regime's enemies and compel obedience to the state.[8] The Jacobins, most famously Robespierre, sometimes referred to themselves as "terrorists".[2] Some modern scholars, however, do not consider the Reign of Terror a form of terrorism, in part because it was carried out by the French state.[9][10]

Scholars dispute whether the roots of terrorism date back to the 1st century and the Sicarii Zealots, to the 11th century and the Al-Hashshashin, to the 19th century and the Fenian Brotherhood and Narodnaya Volya, or to other eras.[11][12] The Sicarii and the Hashshashin are described below, while the Fenian Brotherhood and Narodnaya Volya are discussed in the 19th Century sub-section. Other pre-Reign of Terror historical events sometimes associated with terrorism include the Gunpowder Plot, an attempt to destroy the English Parliament in 1605.[13]

During the 1st century CE, the Jewish Zealots in Judaea Province rebelled, killing prominent collaborators with Roman rule.[11][14][15] In 6 CE, according to contemporary historian Josephus, Judas of Galilee formed a small and more extreme offshoot of the Zealots, the Sicarii ("dagger men").[16] Their efforts were also directed against Jewish "collaborators," including temple priests, Sadducees, Herodians, and other wealthy elites.[17] According to Josephus, the Sicarii would hide short daggers under their cloaks, mingle with crowds at large festivals, murder their victims, and then disappear into the panicked crowds. Their most successful assassination was of the High Priest of Israel Jonathan.[16]

In the late 11th century, the Hashshashin (a.k.a. the Assassins) arose, an offshoot of the Isma'ili sect of ShiaMuslims.[18] Led by Hassan-i Sabbah and opposed to Fatimid rule, the Hashshashin militia seized Alamut and other fortress strongholds across Persia.[19] Hashshashin forces were too small to challenge enemies militarily, so they assassinated city governors and military commanders in order to create alliances with militarily powerful neighbors. For example, they killed Janah al-Dawla, ruler of Homs, to please Ridwan of Aleppo, and assassinated Mawdud, Seljuk emir of Mosul, as a favor to the regent of Damascus.[20] The Hashshashin also carried out assassinations as retribution.[21] Under some definitions of terrorism, such assassinations do not qualify as terrorism, since killing a political leader does not intimidate political enemies or inspire revolt.[11][16][22]

The Sons of Liberty was a clandestine group that formed in Boston and New York City in the 1770s. It had a political agenda of independence of Britain's American colonies. The groups engaged in several acts that could be considered terroristic and used the deeds for propaganda purposes.[23]

On November 5, 1605, a group of conspirators led by Robert Catesby attempted to destroy the English Parliament on its State Opening by King James I. They planned in secret to detonate a large quantity of gunpowder placed beneath the Palace of Westminster. The gunpowder was procured and placed by Guy Fawkes. The group intended to enact a coup by killing King James I and the members of both houses of Parliament. The conspirators planned to make one of the king's children a puppet crown and then restore the Catholic faith to England. The conspirator leased a coal cellar beneath the House of Lords and began stockpiling gunpowder in 1604. As well as its primary targets, it would have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Londoners – the most devastating act of terrorism in Britain's history, plunging the nation into a religious war.[24] English spymasters uncovered the plot and caught Guy Fawkes with the gunpowder beneath Parliament. The other conspirators fled to Holbeach in Staffordshire. A shoot out on November 8th with authorities led to the deaths of Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy and the brothers Christopher and John Wright. The rest were captured. Fawkes and seven others were tried and executed in January 1606.[25] The planned attack has become known as the Gunpowder Plot and is commemorated in Britain every November 5 with fireworks displays and large bonfires with effigies of Guy Fawkes and the Pope are often burned. Comparisons are often drawn between gunpowder plot and modern religious terrorism, such as the attacks in the US by Islamic terrorists on 9/11 2001.[26][27]

In the 19th century, powerful, stable, and affordable explosives were developed, global integration reached unprecedented levels and often radical political movements became widely influential.[29][32] The use of dynamite, in particular, inspired anarchists and was central to their strategic thinking.[33]

One of the earliest groups to utilize modern terrorist techniques was arguably the Fenian Brotherhood and its offshoot the Irish Republican Brotherhood.[34] They were both founded in 1858 as revolutionary and militant nationalist groups, both in Ireland and amongst the emigre community in the United States.[35][36]

After centuries of continued British rule, and influenced most recently from the devastating effects of the 1840s Irish potato famine, these revolutionary fraternal organisations were founded with the aim of establishing an independent republic in Ireland, and began carrying out frequent acts of violence in metropolitan Britain to achieve their aims through intimidation.[37]

In 1867, members of the movement's leadership were arrested and convicted for organizing an armed uprising. While being transferred to prison, the police van in which they were being transported was intercepted and a police sergeant was shot in the rescue. A bolder rescue attempt of another Irish radical incarcerated in Clerkenwell Prison, was made in the same year: an explosion to demolish the prison wall killed 12 people and caused many injuries. The bombing enraged the British public, causing a panic over the Fenian threat.

Although the Irish Republican Brotherhood condemned the Clerkenwell Outrage as a "dreadful and deplorable event", the organisation returned to bombings in Britain in 1881 to 1885, with the Fenian dynamite campaign, beginning one of the first modern terror campaigns.[38] Instead of earlier forms of terrorism based on political assassination, this campaign used modern, timed explosives with the express aim of sowing fear in the very heart of metropolitan Britain, in order to achieve political gains[39] - (Prime ministerWilliam Ewart Gladstone was partly influenced to disestablish the Anglican Church in Ireland as a gesture by the Clerkenwell bombing). The campaign also took advantage of the greater global integration of the times, and the bombing was largely funded and organised by the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States.

The first police unit to combat terrorism was established in 1883 by the Metropolitan Police, initially as a small section of the Criminal Investigation Department. It was known as the Special Irish Branch, and was trained in counter terrorism techniques to combat the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The unit's name was changed to Special Branch as the unit's remit steadily widened over the years.[40]

The concept of "propaganda of the deed" (or "propaganda by the deed", from the French propagande par le fait) advocated physical violence or other provocative public acts against political enemies in order to inspire mass rebellion or revolution. One of the first individuals associated with this concept, the Italian revolutionary Carlo Pisacane (1818–1857), wrote in his "Political Testament" (1857) that "ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around". AnarchistMikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), in his "Letters to a Frenchman on the Present Crisis" (1870) stated that "we must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda".[41][42] The French anarchistPaul Brousse (1844–1912) popularized the phrase "propaganda of the deed"; in 1877 he cited as examples the 1871 Paris Commune and a workers' demonstration in Berne provocatively using the socialist red flag.[43] By the 1880s, the slogan had begun to be used[by whom?] to refer to bombings, regicides and tyrannicides. Reflecting this new understanding of the term, in 1895 Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta described "propaganda by the deed" (which he opposed the use of) as violent communal insurrections meant to ignite an imminent revolution.[44]

Founded in Russia in 1878, Narodnaya Volya (Народная Воля in Russian; People's Will in English) was a revolutionary anarchist group inspired by Sergei Nechayev and by "propaganda by the deed" theorist Pisacane.[11][45] The group developed ideas—such as targeted killing of the "leaders of oppression"—that would become the hallmark of subsequent violence by small non-state groups, and they were convinced that the developing technologies of the age—such as the invention of dynamite, which they were the first anarchist group to make widespread use of[46]—enabled them to strike directly and with discrimination.[29] Attempting to spark a popular revolt against Russian Tsardom, the group killed prominent political figures by gun and bomb, and on March 13, 1881, assassinated Russia's Tsar Alexander II.[11][45] The assassination, by a bomb that also killed the Tsar's attacker, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, failed to spark the expected revolution, and an ensuing crackdown brought the group to an end.[47]

Prior to the American Civil War, abolitionistJohn Brown (1800–1859) advocated and practiced armed opposition to slavery, leading several attacks between 1856 and 1859, the most famous attack was launched in 1859 against the armory at Harpers Ferry. Local forces soon recaptured the fort and Brown was tried and executed for treason.[49] A biographer of Brown has written that Brown's purpose was "to force the nation into a new political pattern by creating terror."[50] In 2009, the 150th anniversary of Brown's death, prominent news publications debated over whether or not Brown should be considered a terrorist.[51][52][53]

Also inspired by Narodnaya Volya, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) was a revolutionary movement founded in 1893 by Hristo Tatarchev in the Ottoman-controlled Macedonian territories.[62][63][64] Through assassinations and by provoking uprisings, the group sought to coerce the Ottoman government into creating a Macedonian nation.[65] On July 20, 1903, the group incited the Ilinden uprising in the Ottoman villayet of Monastir. The IMRO declared the town's independence and sent demands to the European Powers that all of Macedonia be freed.[66] The demands were ignored and Turkish troops crushed the 27,000 rebels in the town two months later.[67]

Revolutionary nationalism continued to motivate political violence in the 20th century, much of it directed against western colonial powers. The Irish Republican Army campaigned against the British in the 1910s and inspired the Zionist groups Hagannah, Irgun and Lehi to fight the British throughout the 1930s in the Palestine mandate.[68][69][need quotation to verify] Like the IRA and the Zionist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt used bombings and assassinations to try to free territory from British control.[70]

The women's suffrage movement in the UK also committed terrorist attacks prior to the First World War. There were three phases of WSPU militancy in 1905, 1908, 1913; including civil disobedience, destruction of public property and arson and bombings. Most notably, The WSPU burned down David Lloyd George's house[71] (despite his support for women's suffrage).

Political assassinations continued, resulting in the assassination of King Umberto I of Italy, killed in July 1900. Political violence became especially widespread in Imperial Russia, and several ministers were killed in the opening years of the 20th century. The highest-ranking was prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, killed in 1911 by Dmitry Bogrov, a spy for the secret police in several anarchist, socialist and other revolutionary groups.[72]

In the 1930s, the Nazi regime in Germany and Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union practiced state terror systematically and on a massive and unprecedented scale.[73] Meanwhile, the Stalin regime branded its opponents with the label "terrorist".[74]

Shortly after the rebellion, Michael Collins and others founded the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which from 1916 to 1923[citation needed] carried out numerous attacks against symbols of British power. For example, it attacked over 300 police stations simultaneously just before Easter 1920,[77] and, in November 1920, publicly killed a dozen police officers and burned down the Liverpool docks and warehouses, an action that became known as Bloody Sunday.[78]

The IRA are considered by some the innovators of modern terrorism as the British would replicate and build upon the tactics used against by the IRA in World War II. Tony Geraghty in The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence wrote:

The Irish [thanks to the example set by Collins and followed by the SOE] can thus claim that their resistance provide the originating impulse for resistance to tyrannies worse than any they had to endure themselves. And the Irish resistance as Collins led it, showed the rest of the world an economical way to fight wars the only sane way they can be fought in the age of the Nuclear bomb.[83]

Following the 1929 Hebron massacre of 67 Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine, the Zionist militia Haganah transformed itself into a paramilitary force. In 1931, however, the more militant Irgun broke away from Haganah, objecting to Haganah's policy of restraint.[84] Founded by Avraham Tehomi,[85][86] Irgun sought to aggressively defend Jews from Arab attacks. Its tactic of attacking Arab communities, including the bombing of a crowded Arab market, is considered[by whom?] among the first examples of terrorism directed against civilians.[87] After the British, in the White Paper of 1939, placed severe restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine and set forth a vision of a single state with an Arab majority,[88] the Irgun began a campaign against British rule by assassinating police, capturing British government buildings and arms, and sabotaging British railways.[89] Irgun's best-known attack targeted the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, parts of which housed the headquarters of the British civil and military administrations. The bombing, in 1946, killed ninety-one people and injured forty-six, making it the most deadly attack during the Mandate era. This attack was sharply condemned by the organized leadership of the Yishuv, and further widened the gulf between David Ben-Gurion's Hagana and Begin's Irgun. Following the bombing, Ben-Gurion called Irgun an "enemy of the Jewish people".[90][91] After the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, Menachem Begin (Irgun leader from 1943 to 1948) transformed the group into the political party Herut, which later became part of Likud in an alliance with the center-right Gahal, Liberal Party, Free Centre, National List, and Movement for Greater Israel.[92][93]

Operating in the British Mandate of Palestine in the 1930s, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (1882-1935) organized and established the Black Hand, a Palestinian nationalist militia. He recruited and arranged military training for peasants, and by 1935 had enlisted between 200 and 800 men. Al-Qassam obtained a fatwa from Shaykh Badr al-Din al-Taji al-Hasani, the Mufti of Damascus, authorizing armed resistance against the British and against the Jews of Palestine. Black Hand cells were equipped with bombs and firearms, which they used to kill Jews.[94][95] Although al-Qassam's revolt was unsuccessful in his lifetime, many organizations gained inspiration from his example.[94] He became a popular hero and an inspiration to subsequent Arab militants, who in the 1936–39 Arab revolt, called themselves Qassamiyun, followers of al-Qassam. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, as well as the rockets they developed, take their names after Qassam.

Lehi (Lohamei Herut Yisrael, a.k.a. "Freedom Fighters for Israel", a.k.a. the Stern Gang) was a revisionist Zionist group that splintered off from Irgun in 1940.[87]Abraham Stern formed Lehi from disaffected Irgun members after Irgun agreed to a truce with Britain in 1940.[89] Lehi assassinated prominent politicians as a strategy. For example, on November 6, 1944, Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State for the Middle East, was assassinated.[96] The act was controversial among Zionist militant groups, Hagannah sympathizing with the British and launching a massive man-hunt against members of Lehi and Irgun. After Israel's 1948 founding, Lehi formally dissolved and its members became integrated into the Israeli Defense Forces.[97]

On the eve of D-Day, the SOE organised with the French Resistance the complete destruction of the rail[100] and communication infrastructure of western France[101] the largest coordinated attack of its kind in history[102] Allied supreme commander Dwight Eisenhower later wrote that "the disruption of enemy rail communications, the harassing of German road moves and the continual and increasing strain placed on German security services throughout occupied Europe by the organised forces of Resistance, played a very considerable part in our complete and final victory".[103]

The SOE also conducted operations in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East.[102]

Th work of the SOE received recognition in 2009 with a memorial in London, however there are differing views on the morality of the SOE's actions; the British military historian John Keegan wrote:

We must recognise that our response to the scourge of terrorism is compromised by what we did through SOE. The justification ... That we had no other means of striking back at the enemy ... is exactly the argument used by the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhoff gang, the PFLP, the IRA and every other half-articulate terrorist organisation on Earth. Futile to argue that we were a democracy and Hitler a tyrant. Means besmirch ends. SOE besmirched Britain.[104]

After World War II, largely successful anti-colonial campaigns were launched against the collapsing European empires, as many World War II resistance groups became militantly anti-colonial. The Viet Minh, for example, which had fought against the Japanese, now fought against the returning French colonists. In the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood used bombings and assassinations against British rule in Egypt.[70] Also during the 1950s, the National Liberation Front (FLN) in French-controlled Algeria and the EOKA in British-controlled Cyprus waged guerrilla and open war against colonial powers.[105]

Founded in 1928 as a nationalist social-welfare and political movement in British-controlled Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood began to attack British soldiers and police stations in the late 1940s .[114] Founded and led by Hassan al-Banna, it also assassinated politicians seen as collaborating with British rule,[115] most prominently Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi in 1948.[116] British rule was overthrown in a 1952 military coup, and shortly thereafter the Muslim Brotherhood went underground in the face of a massive crackdown.[117] Though sometimes banned or otherwise oppressed, the group continues to exist in present-day Egypt.

The National Liberation Front (FLN) was a nationalist group founded in French-controlled Algeria in 1954.[118] The group was a large-scale resistance movement against French rule, with terrorism only part of its operations. The FLN leadership was inspired by the Viet Minh rebels who had made French troops withdraw from Vietnam.[119] The FLN was one of the first anti-colonial groups to use large scale compliance violence. The FLN would establish control over a rural village and coerce its peasants to execute any French loyalists among them.[105] On the night of October 31, 1954, in a coordinated wave of seventy bombings and shootings known as the Toussaint attacks, the FLN attacked French military installations and the homes of Algerian loyalists.[120] In the following year, the group gained significant support for an uprising against loyalists in Philippeville. This uprising, and the heavy-handed response by the French, convinced many Algerians to support the FLN and the independence movement.[citation needed] The FLN eventually secured Algerian independence from France in 1962, and transformed itself into Algeria's ruling party.[121]

The People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) or Mujahedin-e Khalq, is a socialist Islamic group that has fought Iran's government since the Khomeini revolution. The group was founded to oppose capitalism and what it perceived as western exploitation of Iran under the Shah.[131][132] The group would go on to play an important role in the Shah's overthrow but was unable to capitalize on this in the following power vacuum. The group is suspected of having a membership of between 10,000 and 30,000. The group renounced violence in 2001 but remains a proscribed terror organization in Iran and the United States. The EU, however, has removed the group from its terror list. The PMOI is accused of supporting other groups such as the Jundallah.[citation needed]

The "Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan" (Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK) was established in Turkey in 1978 as a Kurdish nationalist party. Founder Abdullah Ocalan was inspired by the Maoist theory of people's war, and like Algeria's FLN he advocated the use of compliance terror.[citation needed] The group seeks to create an independent Kurdish state consisting of parts of south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Iraq, north-eastern Syria and north-western Iran. In 1984, the PKK transformed itself into a paramilitary organisation and launched conventional attacks as well as bombings against Turkish governmental installations. In 1999, Turkish authorities captured Öcalan. He was tried in Turkey and sentenced to life imprisonment. The PKK has since gone through a series of name changes.[134]

Founded in 1959 and still active, the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (or ETA (Basque for "Basque Homeland and Freedom", pronounced [ˈeta])) is an armed Basque nationalist separatist organization.[135] Formed in response to General Francisco Franco's suppression of the Basque language and culture, ETA evolved from an advocacy group for traditional Basque culture into an armed Marxist group demanding Basque independence.[136] Many ETA victims are government officials, the group's first known victim a police chief killed in 1968. In 1973 ETA operatives killed Franco's apparent successor, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, by planting an underground bomb under his habitual parking spot outside a Madrid church.[137] In 1995, an ETA car bomb nearly killed Jose Maria Aznar, then the leader of the conservative Popular Party, and the same year investigators disrupted a plot to assassinate King Juan Carlos.[138] Efforts by Spanish governments to negotiate with the ETA have failed, and in 2003 the Spanish Supreme Court banned the Batasuna political party, which was determined to be the political arm of ETA.[139]

The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was an Irish nationalist movement founded in December 1969 when several militants including Seán Mac Stíofáin broke off from the Official IRA and formed a new organization.[140] Led by Mac Stíofáin in the early 1970s and by a group around Gerry Adams since the late 1970s, the Provisional IRA sought to create an all-island Irish state. Between 1969 and 1997, during a period known as the Troubles, the group conducted an armed campaign, including bombings, gun attacks, assassinations and even a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street.[141] On July 21, 1972, in an attack later known as Bloody Friday, the group set off twenty-two bombs, killing nine and injuring 130. On July 28, 2005, the Provisional IRA Army Council announced an end to its armed campaign.[142][143] The IRA is believed to have been a major exporter of arms to and provided military training to groups such as the FARC in Colombia[144] and the PLO.[145] In the case of the latter there has been a long held solidarity movement, which is evident by the many murals around Belfast.[146]

Ulrike Meinhof

The Red Army Faction (RAF) was a New Left group founded in 1968 by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof in West Germany. Inspired by Che Guevara, Maoist socialism, and the Vietcong, the group sought to raise awareness of the Vietnamese and Palestinian independence movements through kidnappings, taking embassies hostage, bank robberies, assassinations, bombings, and attacks on U.S. air bases. The group is best known for 1977's "German Autumn". The buildup leading to German Autumn began on April 7, when the RAF shot Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback. On July 30, it shot Jurgen Ponto, then head of the Dresdner Bank, in a failed kidnapping attempt; on September 5, the group kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer (a former SS officer and an important West German industrialist), executing him on October 19.[147][148] The hijacking of the Lufthansa jetliner "Landshut" by the PFLP, a Palestinian group, is also considered to be part of German Autumn.[149]

The Red Brigades were a New Left group founded by Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini in 1970 that sought to create a revolutionary state. The group carried out a series of bombings and kidnappings until Curcio and Franceschini were arrested in the mid-1970s. Their successor as leader, Mario Moretti, led the group toward more militarized and violent actions, including the kidnapping of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro on March 16, 1978. Moro was killed 56 days later. This led to an all-out assault on the group by Italian law enforcement and security forces and condemnation from Italian left-wing radicals and even imprisoned ex-leaders of the Brigades. The group lost most of its social support and public opinion turned strongly against it. In 1984, the group split, the majority faction becoming the Communist Combatant Party (Red Brigades-PCC) and the minority faction reconstituting itself as the Union of Combatant Communists (Red Brigades-UCC). Members of these groups carried out a handful of assassinations before almost all were arrested in 1989.[150]

The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) was a Marxist nationalist group that sought to create an independent, socialist Quebec.[151]Georges Schoeters founded the group in 1963 and was inspired by Che Guevara and Algeria's FLN.[152] The group was accused of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations of politicians, soldiers, and civilians.[153] On October 5, 1970, the FLQ kidnapped James Richard Cross, the British Trade Commissioner, and on October 10, the Minister of Labor and Vice-Premier of Quebec, Pierre Laporte. Laporte was killed a week later. After these events support for violence in order to attain Quebec's independence declined, and support increased for the Parti Québécois, which took power in Quebec in 1976.[154]

The Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN, "Armed Forces of National Liberation") is a nationalist group founded in Puerto Rico in 1974. Over the decade that followed the group used bombings and targeted killings of civilians and police in pursuit of an independent Puerto Rico. The FALN in 1975 took responsibility for four nearly simultaneous bombings in New York City.[163] The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has classified the FALN as a terrorist organization.[164]

The Japanese Red Army was founded by Fusako Shigenobu in Japan in 1971 and attempted to overthrow the Japanese government and start a world revolution. Allied with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the group committed assassinations, hijacked a commercial Japanese aircraft, and sabotaged a Shell oil refinery in Singapore. On May 30, 1972, Kōzō Okamoto and other group members launched a machine gun and grenade attack at Israel's Lod Airport in Tel Aviv, killing 26 people and injuring 80 others. Two of the three attackers then killed themselves with grenades.[166]

Founded in 1976, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, (also called "LTTE" or Tamil Tigers) was a militant Tamil nationalist political and paramilitary organization based in northern Sri Lanka.[167] From its founding by Velupillai Prabhakaran, it waged a secessionist resistance campaign that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the northern and eastern regions of Sri Lanka.[168] The conflict originated in measures the majority Sinhalese took that were perceived as attempts to marginalize the Tamil minority.[169] The resistance campaign evolved into the Sri Lankan Civil War, one of the longest-running armed conflicts in Asia.[170] The group carried out many bombings, including an April 21, 1987, car bomb attack at a Colombo bus terminal that killed 110 people.[171] In 2009 the Sri Lankan military launched a major military offensive against the secessionist movement and claimed that it had effectively destroyed the LTTE.

In Kenya, because of the seeming ongoing failure of the Kenyan African Union to obtain political reforms from the British through peaceful means, radical activists within the KAU set up a splinter group and organised a more militant kind of nationalism. By 1952 The Mau Mau consisted of Kikuyu fighters, along with some Embu and Meru recruits. The Mau Mau carried out attacks on political opponents, loyalist villages, raiding white settler farms and destroying livestock. The British colonial administration declared a state of emergency and British forces were sent to Kenya.[172] The majority of fighting was between loyalist and Mau Mau Kikuyu, so many scholars today now consider it a Kikuyu civil war. The Kenyan Government considers the Mau Mau Uprising a key step towards Kenya's independence from British Imperial rule.[173][174] The British were accused of using torture and mass executions as part of their efforts to suppress the Mau Mau,[175] though the British forces did have strict orders not to mistreat Mau Mau terrorists.[176]

Founded in 1961, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) was the military wing of the African National Congress; it waged a guerrilla campaign against the South African apartheid regime and was responsible for many bombings.[177] MK launched its first guerrilla attacks against government installations on 16 December 1961. The South African government subsequently banned the group after classifying it as a terrorist organization. MK's first leader was Nelson Mandela, who was tried and imprisoned for the group's acts.[178] With the end of apartheid in South Africa, Umkhonto we Sizwe was incorporated into the South African armed forces.

The Contras were a counter-revolutionary militia formed in 1979 to oppose Nicaragua's Sandinista government. The Catholic Institute for International Relations asserted the following about contra operating procedures in 1987: "The record of the contras in the field... is one of consistent and bloody abuse of human rights, of murder, torture, mutilation, rape, arson, destruction and kidnapping."[180]Americas Watch‍—‌subsequently folded into Human Rights Watch‍—‌accused the Contras of targeting health care clinics and health care workers for assassination; kidnapping civilians, torturing civilians; executing civilians, including children, who were captured in combat; raping women; indiscriminately attacking civilians and civilian houses; seizing civilian property; and burning civilian houses in captured towns.[181] The contras disbanded after the election of Violetta Chamorro in 1990.[182]

659 people died in Lebanon between 1982 and 1986 in 36 suicide attacks directed against American, French and Israeli forces, by 41 individuals with predominantly leftist political beliefs who were adherents of both the Christian and Muslim religions.[186][dubious– discuss] The 1983 Beirut barracks bombing (by the Islamic Jihad Organization), which killed 241 U.S. and 58 French peacekeepers and six civilians at the peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, was particularly deadly.[187][188][189][190]Hezbollah ("Party of God") is an Islamist movement and political party officially founded in Lebanon in 1985, ten years after the outbreak of that country's civil war. Inspired by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution, the group originally sought an Islamic revolution in Lebanon[citation needed] and has long fought for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. Led by Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah since 1992, the group has captured Israeli soldiers and carried out missile attacks and suicide bombings against Israeli targets.[191]

Aum Shinrikyo, now known as Aleph, was a Japanese religious group founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984 as a yogic meditation group. Later, in 1990, Asahara and 24 other members campaigned for election to the House of Representatives under the banner of Shinri-tō (Supreme Truth Party). None were voted in, and the group began to militarize. Between 1990 and 1995, the group attempted several apparently unsuccessful violent attacks using the methods of biological warfare, using botulin toxin and anthrax spores.[228] On June 28, 1994, Aum Shinrikyo members released sarin gas from several sites in the Kaichi Heights neighborhood of Matsumoto, Japan, killing eight and injuring 200 in what became known as the Matsumoto incident.[228] Seven months later, on March 20, 1995, Aum Shinrikyo members released sarin gas in a coordinated attack on five trains in the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 commuters and damaging the health of about 5,000 others[229] in what became known as the subway sarin incident (地下鉄サリン事件, chikatetsu sarin jiken). In May 1995, Asahara and other senior leaders were arrested and the group's membership rapidly decreased.

In 1985, Air India Flight 182 flying from Canada was blown up by a bomb while in Irish airspace, killing 329 people, including 280 Canadian citizens, mostly of Indian birth or descent, and 22 Indians.[230] The incident was the deadliest act of air terrorism before 9/11, and the first bombing of a 747 Jumbo Jet which would set a pattern for future air terrorism plots. The crash occurred within an hour of the fatal Narita Airport Bombing which also originated from Canada without the passenger for the bag that exploded on the ground. Evidence from the explosions, witnesses and wiretaps of militants pointed to an attempt to actually blow up two airliners simultaneously by members of the Babbar KhalsaKhalistan movement militant group based in Canada to punish India for attacking the Golden Temple.

Hostage crisis victim photos, on the walls of the former School Number One

Chechen separatists, led by Shamil Basayev, carried out several attacks on Russian targets between 1994 and 2006.[233] In the June 1995 Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, Basayev-led separatists took over 1,000 civilians hostage in a hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk. When Russian special forces attempted to free the hostages, 105 civilians and 25 Russian troops were killed.[234]

On September 1, 2004, in what became known as the Beslan school hostage crisis, 32 Chechen separatists took 1,300 children and adults hostage at Beslan's School Number One. When Russian authorities did not comply with the rebel demands that Russian forces withdraw from Chechnya, 20 adult male hostages were shot. After two days of stalled negotiations, Russian special forces stormed the building. In the ensuing melee, over 300 hostages died, along with 19 Russian servicemen and all but perhaps one of the rebels. Basayev is believed to have participated in organizing the attack.[239][clarification needed].

The 2004 Madrid train bombings (also known in Spain as 11-M) were nearly simultaneous, coordinated bombings against the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, on the morning of 11 March 2004‍—‌three days before Spain's general elections and two and a half years after the September 11 attacks in the United States. The explosions killed 191 people and wounded 1,800. It was concluded that the bombs were carried on the trains hidden in backpacks, While many went off three were found later that did not detonate.[240] The official investigation by the Spanish judiciary found that the attacks were directed by an al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell. ETA and al Qaeda were the original suspects cited by the Spanish government.[241]

The 7 July 2005 London bombings (often referred to as 7/7) were a series of coordinated suicide bomb attacks in central London which targeted civilians using the public transport system during the morning rush hour. On the morning of Thursday, 7 July 2005, four Islamist extremists separately detonated three bombs in quick succession aboard London Underground trains across the city and, later, a fourth on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. Fifty-two civilians were killed and over 700 more were injured in the attacks. Later a dozen unexploded bombs were found in a car located in North London. 3 out of the 4 suspects were identified Mohammed Silique Khan, Germaine Morris Lindsay, Shahzad Tawnier where they are found to be in cohorts with Osama Bin Laden and eventually documents are leaked showing that Osama bin laden and Rashid Ruff planned the London bombings.[242]

In Norway in 2011 two sequential lone wolf terrorist attacks by right wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik were carried out against the government, the civilian population, and a Workers' Youth League (AUF)-run summer camp in Norway on 22 July 2011. The attacks claimed a total of 77 lives. The first part of the attack was a van bomb in Oslo. The van was placed in front of the office block housing the office of Prime Minister and other government buildings. The explosion killed eight people and injured at least 209 people, twelve of them seriously. He followed this attack by impersonating a police officer to access the island on which the AUF summer camp was being held and proceeded to go on a shooting spree that killed 69 people.[243]

In 2013 the British government branded the killing of a serviceman in a Woolwich street, a terrorist attack. One of his attackers made political statements which were later broadcast with blood still on his hands from the attack.[244] The two men responsible for the attack remained on the scene until incapacitated by armed police. They were later tried and found guilty of murder.

The Je suis Charlie ("I am Charlie") slogan became an endorsement of freedom of speech and press

From 7 January to 9 January 2015, a series of five terrorist attacks occurred across the Île-de-France region, particularly in Paris. The attacks killed a total of 17 people, in addition to the three perpetrators of the attack,[245][246] and wounded 22 others, some of whom are in critical condition as of 16 January 2015[update]. A fifth shooting attack did not result in any fatalities. Numerous other smaller incidents of attacks on mosques have been reported, but have not yet been directly linked to the attacks. The group that claims responsibility for the attacks, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, claimed that the attack had been planned for years ahead.[247]

On 9 January, police tracked the assailants to an industrial estate in Dammartin-en-Goële, where they took a hostage. Another gunman also shot a police officer on 8 January and took hostages the next day, at a kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes.[263]GIGN (a special operations unit of the French Armed Forces), combined with RAID and BRI (special operations units of the French Police), conducted simultaneous raids in Dammartin and at Porte de Vincennes. Three terrorists were killed, along with four hostages who died in the Vincennes supermarket before the intervention; some other hostages were injured.[264][265][266]

On 13 November, 28 hours after the Beirut attack, three groups of ISIS terrorists performed mass killings in various places in Paris' Xe and XIe arrondissements. They killed a total of more than 130 citizens. Hostages were taken in the concert hall "Le Bataclan" for three hours, and ninety were killed before the special police entered.[267] The president immediately started the emergency threat procedure, for the first time on the entire French territory since the Algeria events in 1960.

On March 22, 2016 yet another terrorist attack happened within the confines of Europe. Three nail bombs went off at the same time in Belgium, two happened at Brussels Airport in Zaventem approximately 40 seconds apart. The other nail bomb was at Maalbeck metro station also in Brussels about an hour after the airport attacks The act was carried out by 3 suicide bombers, killing 31 people and injuring 300 people in the process. The three men were claimed as members of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria known as ISIS. The third nail bomb at the metro station failed to explode during the terrorist act that Tuesday and was safely deactivated. The two men who hit the Brussels Airport were brothers Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Khalid El Bakraoui while a third person was with them Najim Laachraoui who was believed to be the bomb maker also died, the suspect who had the bomb at the metro station has not yet been identified. The Brothers were both killed during the explosions along with the bomb maker, while the unidentified terrorist fled for he had the bomb that did not explode in the metro station.[268]

Brussels responded to this attack with a level 4 alert the highest it had had since the Paris attacks mentioned above. World leaders responded by unifying and offering their aid along with sorrows for the tragedy that happened there on March 22, 2016. 28 heads of state in the European union agreed to fight the War on Terror to better and protect the Union. The attacks on Brussels had no forewarning nor did officials think an attack on that scale could ever be perpetuated.[269]

Osama bin Laden, closely advised by Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 1988 founded Al-Qaeda (Arabic: القاعدة, meaning "The Base"), an Islamicjihadist movement to replace Western-controlled or dominated Muslim countries with Islamic fundamentalist regimes.[270] In pursuit of that goal, bin Laden issued a 1996 manifesto that vowed violent jihad against U.S. military forces based in Saudi Arabia.[271] On August 7, 1998, individuals associated with Al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic Jihad carried out simultaneous bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa which resulted in 224 deaths.[272] On October 12, 2000, Al-Qaeda carried out the USS Cole bombing, a suicide bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole harbored in the Yemeni port of Aden. The bombing killed seventeen U.S. sailors.[273]

The United States responded to the attacks by launching the War on Terror. Specifically, on October 7, 2001, it invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban, which had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists. On October 26, 2001, the U.S. enacted the Patriot Act that expanded the powers of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Many countries followed with similar legislation. Under the Obama administration, the U.S. changed tactics moving away from ground combat with large numbers of troops, to the use of drones and special forces. This campaign eliminated much of al-Qaeda's most senior members, including a strike by Seal Team Six that resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

On Israel's northern border, after its unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Hezbollah launched numerous Katyusha rocket attacks against non-civilian and civilian areas within northern Israel.[276] Within Israel, the 1993–2008 Second Intifada involved in part a series of suicide bombings against civilian and non-civilian targets. 1100 Israelis were killed in the Second Intifada, the majority being civilians.[277][278] A 2007 study of Palestinian suicide bombings from September 2000 through August 2005 found that 40% percent were carried out by Hamas's Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and roughly 26% by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Fatah militias.[278][279] Also, between 2001 and January 2009, over 8,600 rocket attacks were launched from the Gaza Strip were launched into civilian areas and non-civilian areas inside Israel, causing deaths, injuries, and psychological trauma.[280][281][282] Formed in 2003, Jundallah is a Sunni insurgent group from the Baloch region of Iran and neighboring Pakistan. It has committed numerous attacks within Iran, stating that it is fighting for the rights of the Sunni minority there. In 2005 the group attempted to assassinate Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[283] The group takes credit for other bombings, including the 2007 Zahedan bombings. Iran and other sources accuse the group of being a front for or supported by other nations, in particular the U.S. and Pakistan.[284][285]

As the Islamic state of Syria and Iraq increases in size and power their attacks are affecting all parts of the world even in their own back yard of Turkey. Taking place in Istanbul a suicide bomber once again detonated a car bomb killing 4 people and injuring 31. No extremist group took responsibility for the attack but the attacker Mehmet Ozturk was linked to have ties with ISIS. This was just days after the car bomb attack in Turkeys capital of Ankara killing 37 people. The U.S. security council asked for the repeated terror attacks on Turkey to stop, and that the War on Terror will just become stronger due actions like these killing innocent people. Since the attacks Israel has requested that its citizens not travel to Turkey unless its necessary.[286]

On December 27, 2007 two time elected Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated during a gathering she was having with her supporters. A suicide bomber detonated a bomb along with other extremists against her shooting off guns killing the prime minister and 14 other people. She was immediately rushed to the hospital and was pronounced dead.[287] She was believed to be target because she was warning Pakistan along with the world of the uprising Jihadist groups and extremist groups gaining power. The responsibility of her death falls on the president of the time Pervez Musharraf who also was the ex- military chief, She had several conversations with Musharraf about upping her security due to the increase of death threats she was receiving and he denied her request. Although AL-Qaeda took responsibility for her death it is seen in the eye of the people as former President's Pervez Musharraf's fault for not taking her concerns seriously. However, during his trial he denies that no conversation happened between him and Benzair Bhutto about the security of her life.[288]

The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel – six explosions were reported in the hotel,200 hostages were rescued from the burning building. A group of European Parliament committee members were staying at the hotel at the time but none were injured. Two attackers held hostages in the hotel.

Leopold Café – a popular cafe and bar on the Causeway that was one of the first places to be attacked resulting in the death of 10 people

The Trident-Oberoi Hotel – one explosion was heard here where the President of Madrid was eating, he was not injured

Nariman House, a Jewish community center – had a hostage situation by two attackers eventually the hostages became freed when an aerial view of the building was displayed and NSG's stormed the building eventually killing the two attackers.

Cama Hospital – the attacks were carried out by 10 gunman that arrived on speed boats boat from Pakistan, separating going building to building grabbing hostages, setting bombs up and mass murdering with guns. Eventually 9 out of the 10 gunman were killed. Pakistan denied that the men were a part of their country but eventually released documents that 3 of the men were from Pakistan and that cases would be opened against them[289]

[290][291][292] The attacks, which drew widespread condemnation across the world, began on 26 November 2008 and lasted until 29 November, killing at least 173 people and wounding at least 308.[293][294][295]

On January 14, 2016 a series of terrorist attacks took place in Jakarta, Indonesia resulting in 8 dead. The responsibility of these attacks were claimed by ISIS Counter terrorism has named this type of attack 'Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attack' because of the fast reaction needed by local policemen to stop the gunfire attack from the terrorists.[296] The attack on Jakarta is linked to a bigger picture of terror in the Indonesian country for those of ISIS. Indonesia is home of the "largest regional terror groups" housing seven Islamist extremist groups. Leaving the thoughts that ISIS is trying to establish a satellite city in Indonesia, due to the fact that it has the largest Muslim population. Although ISIS branches have not yet reached the land of Southeast Asia in big masses, there is the fear that it is only a matter of time until Indonesias small extremist groups grow in masses once direct contact with ISIS is made. Once contact is established local terror groups will quickly mobilize to carry out the tasks that ISIS asks of them. ISIS will turn to Southeast Asia because it is only evident that they will lose control of the middle east.[297]

The more recent terrorist attack in the United States have included the 2015 San Bernardino attack,[298] the Bombing of Boston Marathon by Islamic terrorists, the shooting of police officers in sniper ambushes by members of Black Lives Matter movement, and the shooting of multiple black parishioners at church and car attack on anti-fascist protesters in Charlottesville by right-wing extremists and white supremacists.

^Paul Reynolds; quoting David Hannay; Former UK ambassador (14 September 2005). "UN staggers on road to reform". BBC News. Retrieved 2010-01-11. This would end the argument that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter...

^For example: Getty, J. Arch (1993). "2: The Politics of Repression Revisited". In Getty, John Arch; Thompson Manning, Roberta. Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 57. ISBN9780521446709. Retrieved 2017-10-02. [...] V. I. Nevskii, former head of the Lenin Library, directly accused Bukharin of leading a 'terrorist center.' [...] Ezhov gave a report summarizing the mounting 'evidence' against Bukharin as leader of the 'terrorist plot' along with the Trotskyists.

^Chaliand, Gerard. The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to al Qaeda. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. p.185

^問10．ハマスとは何ですか。Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.' 日本は、ハマスを、国連安保理決議1373に基づいて、外国為替及び外国貿易法（外為法）に基づく資産凍結措置の対象としています。'On the basis of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, Japan applies to Hamas the frozen assets measures in accordance with its Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Law (Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Control Law).'

^'Hamas's Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades,' Australian National Security:'Like its parent, Hamas is a multifaceted, well organised and relatively moderate organisation renowned for its extensive social service networks in the Palestinian Territories.'

^Conal Urquhart. "Paris Police Say 12 Dead After Shooting at Charlie Hebdo". Time. Witnesses said that the gunmen had called out the names of individual from the magazine. French media report that Charb, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist who was on al-Qaeda's most wanted list in 2013, was seriously injured.

^United States District Court, Southern District of New York (February 6, 2001). "Testimony of Jamal Ahmad Al-Fadl". United States v. Usama bin Laden et al., defendants. James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Archived from the original on November 10, 2001. Retrieved 2008-09-03.